Facebook puts fraudulent “Likes” on notice

Scammers, time to tweak your techniques again.

Facebook engineers have rolled out new technology that automatically removes fraudulent Likes that are mass-produced to exaggerate the popularity of a webpage or brand.

The social network recently increased its learning algorithms to detect the spammed endorsements, which are often generated by computers, fake Facebook accounts, or other fraudulent means, the company said on its security blog Friday morning. The post said the inauthentic Likes are a tiny sliver of the overall endorsements on the site; on average, less than one percent of the Likes on any given page are expected to be affected. We're guessing, however, that certain pages—say, some promoting things like male enhancement pills—will be heavily hit.

"These newly improved automated efforts will remove those Likes gained by malware, compromised accounts, deceived users, or purchased bulk Likes," the Facebook post stated. "While we have always had dedicated protections against each of these threats on Facebook, these improved systems have been specifically configured to identify and take action against suspicious Likes."

In addition to spawning script-created Facebook accounts, Like scammers often use other tricks, such as clickjacking. The technique uses Adobe Flash objects to hide the true destination of a Web link, tricking people into clicking on links they had no intention of hitting. Twitter has been rolling out similar technology to curtail fraudulent tweets and accounts on its site, and one recent report found that 15 percent of US presidential candidate Mitt Romney's followers were paid fakes.

Facebook's blog post doesn't elaborate on the underlying technology that makes the automated efforts work, but with so many different methods of falsifying Likes, we're curious to see just how effective the new Facebook measures are.